


Like My Parents Did

by moonmoth (greyvvardenfell)



Series: Fictober 2019 [24]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23571931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/moonmoth
Summary: Julian struggles with difficult memories during a storm while sailing to Nevivon.
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak
Series: Fictober 2019 [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696495
Kudos: 11





	Like My Parents Did

**Author's Note:**

> For the Fictober prompt: "Scared, me?"

Julian paced, the predictable strike of his boots on the well-worn wood of the cabin floor barely grounding him as the gale outside howled past. Fear fluttered like a trapped bird against the inside of his ribs, threatening to spill over into panic with each lash of rain, but he kept his head down, treading the three steps across the room, pivoting on his heel, and the three steps back again and again until the stormcloud darkness began to lighten and the waves battering the sides of Mazelinka’s sturdy ship sank back into the sea.

Still, they were leagues from Nevivon. Leagues of angry water and unfeeling skies, weather patterns that would just as soon slap their vessel into the depths as leave them alone. And Julian, fool that he was, had allowed not only Mazelinka to cross this expanse after years on land, but Portia too. And— the sobs he’d tried to keep from escaping for the past two hours at last breached his defenses as he stared at Reyja, curled peacefully in their shared bunk, sleeping through the storm. How could he have put all three of them, the people who mattered most to him in all the world, at such risk? Reyja, especially. She’d never set foot on a ship before, a fact made evident before they were out of sight of the Vesuvian skyline. Seasickness dogged her long onto the open ocean and even now, she spent more time below decks than above.

“Oh, darling… what have I done?” His voice was thick with suppressed tears and stifled by the side of his shaking hand. He slumped into a back corner near the low, rough-framed door, as far from the porthole as he could get.

Despite the softness of his words, Reyja stirred. With the storm dissipated and the rocking of the ship subsided, perhaps she had been closer to wakefulness than he realized. One of her hands emerged from the cocoon of blankets swaddled around her, stretching out to the wall before retreating again. “Juley?”

He couldn’t keep the tremor in his throat from giving him away when he answered. “I’m here, love.”

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Immediately, she sat up, blinking the remains of sleep from her eyes as she swung her bare legs off the bunk.

“No! No, nothing’s happened!” Julian kept to the shadows on the edge of the room with his back turned, wiping frantically at his face with one loose sleeve in an attempt to clear away the evidence of his spilled tears. “A mild storm, is all. You slept through the whole thing, my dear. Nothing, ah. Nothing at all to worry about.”

He could feel her eyes piercing between his hunched shoulders. “Then why am I worried?” she asked quietly.

With effort, Julian made himself shrug. “A bad dream, maybe? You know, when I was knocking around Atapra, I ran into a—”

“Please don’t.”

He choked on the rest of his sentence, halfway committed to turning around when an embarrassed flush began to creep up his neck. “Erm…”

Reyja was still staring at him, her eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Please don’t try to blow me off like that. I can tell you’re upset. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, but at least say so.”

Finally, he tore himself out of the empty corner and sighed. “I’m sorry, Reyja. The, ah, the storm.” He gestured vaguely towards the porthole as he crossed to the bunk and sat down beside her. “Had, er… has me a bit on edge. I just didn’t want to worry you with something so trivial when you were sleeping.”

“Jujubee,” she said, nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder. “You can always wake me up for stuff like that. Or anything you want, really. I won’t mind.”

He made a noncommittal noise. “But there’s nothing to be done about it now.”

“What do you mean?”

Several heartbeats passed while Julian weighed his options. He knew lying again would be useless; he’d never been able, or willing, to lie convincingly to her. But the guilt that ate away at his stomach and twisted up the roots of his heart, the fear that threatened to drown him as surely as the cold water on the other side of the pitch-sealed planks could, swore it shouldn’t be shared. It would destroy whoever it touched, it sang with an evil grin. Only he could keep it at bay. Yet he’d heard this song before. The very person who had taught him how to listen to other things was sitting right next to him, peering up into his eyes, asking him once again to rid himself of the tar in the recesses of his mind for her. And for her, he could do it.

“Oh, Reyja, I’ve made such a terrible mistake.” He crumpled against her, his long fingers clutching at her arms as the knot in his chest reversed itself. Startled, but not entirely surprised, she did her best to haul all six-plus feet of him into a comfortable position in her lap, curling protectively around him as he wept wordlessly. She rubbed his back and rocked him, gentled and soothed him, balled her hands into his shirt to keep him close and didn’t flinch when all the tears he shed soaked through the blankets onto her skin.

“You’re okay, ‘Bee, everything’s alright. We’re safe here, you’re safe here,” she repeated in a low murmur, pressing kisses onto his temple and jawline.

After a while, he heaved a great, shuddering breath and pulled his head from the crook of her neck. “Good god, love, I’m so— I’m so sorry,” he hiccuped, still leaking tears. He sniffled and attempted a watery smile. “I’m sure this is far from the man you want to be vacationing with.”

“Juley, I love every part of you,” declared Reyja, wiping under his eyes with a corner of the sheet. “Anywhere you want to go, I’ll be there. No matter what. Do you feel better, at least?”

Julian took another breath and let it out in a sigh, ducking into her shoulder again. “Oh, my dearest… I love you so much, losing you would—” He shivered. “I don’t even want to imagine what it would do to me.” He squeezed her waist tightly, like he never wanted to let go.

She cupped the back of his head and burrowed her fingers into his hair, scratching gently at his scalp. “Why are you thinking about losing me? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Not on purpose.”

“No, not on purpose. Or for any other reason, if I can help it.”

“Ah, but that’s just it.” He twisted around to shoot a foul glare at the window. “Even your magic is powerless against nature, darling. The Devil himself chose lightning as his calling card, didn’t he? And you… I—” Another sob wracked him, doubling him over into her embrace again.

“Oh, Juley…” Reyja gathered his long limbs close to her, brows furrowed as she considered his words. It made sense that he would be so brought down by storms, especially storms at sea. Even before the Devil exacerbated the connection, the terrible crash of thunder and brightly-rent wounds of lightning through a cloud-darkened sky must have been nothing but omens of ill tidings to him: the last night he saw her before she succumbed to the plague, the cyclone-strength winds that stirred the city when Lucio’s ritual was disrupted, thanks to the Devil’s wrath and the immense amount of magic that had been released when Asra intervened. But she’d never seen him like this… except when they had huddled together in Death’s realm after escaping from Valdemar’s trap. They, too, had known to include a storm in his nightmare, representative of the worst of them all.

“I don’t want to die like my parents did, Rey,” Julian whispered raggedly when he found his voice again. “I couldn’t— I can’t— it was this same sea, you know. Around this same time of year, even. Good god, what have I done? What have I done?!”

“Juley, Julian, it’s okay. You’re okay!”

But he scrambled to sit up, wriggling out of her arms. “I cannot endure that again! The loss… oh, god. God! No! I won’t!”

“Julian!”

“We’re getting off of this ship at the very next port. All of us, Mazelinka and Pasha too. I’ll carry you if I have to, but I will not—”

Reyja caught his wrist as he made to get off the bunk, his eyes wide and wild and his other hand dragging through his hair. When he looked down, he saw himself reflected in her eyes, tear-stained and red-faced, and slammed back into himself. The force of it nearly made him stagger, and he rejoined her heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. She shifted her grip from his wrist to his hand and meshed her fingers with his. Julian focused on the weave of their skin tones, pale against paler, feeling yet more tears begin to form in the corners of his eyes.

“I had no idea you were this scared, lovely,” said Reyja softly, leaning into him.

“Scared? No, darling. I was scared when Nadia almost caught us in the library, thinking that not only would I be hanged, you would hang along with me. This is…” He shook his head. “I wonder if there’s always been something in me that’s sought out the sea as a, ah, as a sort of way to tempt fate. For so long, I felt like I was living on borrowed time anyway. Nothing left to lose. All my adventures, I look back on them now and can’t help but think how different they would’ve been, how different I would have been, had you been beside me. I wouldn’t have been half as foolhardy, I think, nor half as… as…”

“You won’t gain anything by tormenting yourself like that, Jujubee.”

He took a long moment to gaze at her, expression shifting from sadness to love. His fingers still intertwined with hers, he scrubbed at his eyes with his other hand and cleared his throat.

“No, my dear. I won’t. I, mm, I don’t think I regret all that I did, anyway. But, ah, once we return from Nevivon, I think I might take a long break from seafaring. Possibly a permanent one. How does that sit with you?”

Reyja smiled at him. “You don’t have to ask me twice. I’ll be happy to see the— wait, don’t tell me, the aft? Of this thing? Sail away into the distance.”

He laughed. “The stern. Aft is an on-deck direction. It would be the correct one, though.”

“Close enough, then.”

Julian scooted back against the wall and guided Reyja to his chest, folding himself around her like a cape with his arms over her shoulders and his legs crossed under hers. He kissed the tendon running down the side of her neck and sighed, drained.

“I’ve been thinking about something, Juley,” she said after several minutes passed. “It’s not completely related to this, but it could be.”

“What is it, love?”

“Well, you said ‘when we get back from Nevivon,’ and I was just wondering what you thought about possibly not living in Vesuvia anymore.”

He blinked. “Did you have somewhere else in mind?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it extensively. But with Portia off to Prakra next year to be with Nahara, Mazelinka staying behind here, and all of our other friends kind of doing their own things too, I just, y’know. Other than you, I don’t really have any ties to the city itself.”

“That’s almost exactly what I was going to say.” He grinned at her.

“And it would be a chance to get away from the coast. Move inland a bit?”

“Mmm, yes! Lots of opportunities there. To be honest, I’ve always felt like having so much cheap, easily accessible shellfish close at hand is the main reason I don’t keep kosher as well as I should. Certainly having you around has helped, but I could still be better.”

Reyja wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, seafood. But of course I’d keep kosher with you. Wait, there aren’t any rules against that, are there?”

“Erm, I don’t believe so. But I don’t think it’s called keeping kosher if you do it. It’s just—” He waved one hand, gesticulating abstractly. “Eating cleanly, or something like that. Same principle, different, ah, behind-the-scenes administration.”

When he shot her one of his trademark grins, she knew the clouds in his mind were clearing as surely as the ones outside.

“Well,” she said, drawing his arm in to wrap around her again. “We can start drawing up those plans as soon as we get home, then.”

“And may it not be home for long, my love.”


End file.
